Popular Din Romania

Musical documentary essay on Romanians in the metro in Paris in December 2004.

The film celebrates the 50th anniversary of the legendary Romanian rock band Phoenix. It features interviews with key members like Nicolae Covaci, the band's founder, and Mircea Baniciu, one of its iconic voices. The documentary includes rare archival footage and offers a comprehensive look at the band's history, its impact on Romanian culture, and its journey through various political and cultural landscapes.

Ali's 5th birthday party transforms into a shocking and chaotic ritual improvised by his grandparents. Moments of humor, intimacy, and turmoil, a poignant examination of identity, tradition, and the intricate dynamics within modern families.

On August 23rd, 1944, the fascist regime was taken down and Romania changed sides in World War II. 75 years later, inside the Jewish Retirement Home, four of the last survivors of racial persecutions reflect upon the personal and political significance of the event. The different attitudes of the protagonists, their passionate debates and irresolvable conflicts reflect the diversity of the Jewish survivors` experiences, the cleavages in the community and the Romanian society as a whole, as well as the importance and controversy of the events in 1944.

The rituals and the ancient carols practised by the shepherd communities in the Carpathian Mountains are nothing short of those of the ancient Greek and Roman rituals.

Jean Mihail’s "Rapsodia Rustica" deals with the life in Romanian villages in the period after the war.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived happily with her parents and her younger sister. But the little girl lived in Romania and her parents really wanted a house for them, so they went to work in Spain. The little girl stayed with her sister in the care of her grandmother and so the years passed, until one day the little sister told her that their parents were going to return. So the little girl began to hope.

Self-exiled in Turkey since 1999 and recently expelled, Mr. Constantin discovers that he had been declared dead by the Romanian authorities, at the request of his wife.

Rebeca, Iulia and Florin, a film crew with not much experience, decide to shoot a documentary about the mysterious Toni Oniga. They have heard about him from many friends and are very interested in meeting him. But he turns out to be very hard to find. The filmmakers get the impression that people don’t want to say where Toni Oniga is. They have only good things to say about him, that he was like salvation to them, but never go into any details. Things get more and more confusing. Is it possible that Tony Oniga is an urban legend and never really existed?

Time passes by quickly for a young, small family: soon it will no longer be that small, the children grow up, the parents get older, and this reality in constant motion, erased and diffused, sometimes stops itself in front of the camera.

A landscape is a landscape is a landscape. But in her view of the ambiguity of reality, Wanda Mihuleac composes an infinite landscape of reflections and lights.

In an unusual spaghetti western setting, a man - played by Ilarion Ciobanu - returns to his home village after spending time at the front. He finds his wife in the company of another man - played by Anușavan Salamanian - who is also raising his son. The confrontation between the two is at its most intense when they exchange glances that, in Ciobanu's case, seem to be a textbook study in Clint Eastwood's taciturn protagonist from Sergio Leone's famous trilogy. In many ways, People Aren't Goats stands out among all the other student films of the period. But the point where it proves most particular is its belonging to a genre - spaghetti western - at that time still new worldwide, whose national exponent will remain Ilarion Ciobanu, through the roles he played in the singular western trilogy, released a few years later, in which the people of the Ardennes go through all sorts of adventures.

An industrial documentary that shows the whole process of clothes and shoe making, from cutting animal skin to final selling of the finite products in the factory shop.